An expanded NFL playoff format could be fun

With an expanded playoff format, both the Bears and Vikings would have made the postseason in 2012.(Photo: Dennis Wierzbicki-USA TODAY Sports)

What if there was an extra week of NFL playoffs?

According to a report from ESPN’s Chris Mortensen Sunday, the NFL is “urgently discussing a new scheduling formula that would include a three-game preseason to go with a 16-game regular season,” which would also include the addition of a seventh playoff team from each conference.

The elimination of the fourth preseason game is a no-brainer, as we’ve advocated in this space before, but wouldn’t have much of an impact on fans beyond the season-ticket holders no longer stuck paying for it. The addition of a third wild-card team, however, would certainly alter the potential landscape of the league.

The best format? The league decides to pit the sixth and seventh seeded teams against each other in a play-in week, giving the other teams a bye week prior to the wild-card round. The winner would earn the second wild-card spot and face the third seeded division winner on the road the following week. It would extend the playoffs one additional week and certainly make up for any revenue the league loses with the elimination of the preseason game.

The only issue with that plan could be giving top two seeds two weeks off, which would be a long layoff but also a chance for those squads to shake off some of the lingering injuries from the previous 17 weeks.

Another option would be to keep the playoffs at their current length, but eliminate the bye week for the second-seeded team in each conference, forcing a No. 7 vs. No. 2 matchup during the wild-card Round and then reseeding the remaining four teams for the divisional round.

The report says that the format change is likely several years away, but how would it have affected last year’s playoffs? Going with the first scenario, we would have seen the 10-6 Bears as a playoff team as well as the 8-8 Pittsburgh Steelers. Both seventh-seeded teams would have faced a division rival for the third time.

The second model seems a bit more unfair to division winners, as forcing the 12-4 Patriots to host a .500 Steelers team without a week off wouldn’t have been much of a reward for such a successful regular season.

But the extension of the postseason by a week for an MLB-like sub wild-card matchup that wouldn’t fatigue division winners and would have given a deserving team like Bears the same shot as the also 10-6 Vikings? That would have been fun.

There’s always a chance that an undeserving 8-8 squad would end up being the seventh-seeded wild-card. However, in the past five seasons, half of the ten sixth-seeded wild-card teams have earned their spot in a tiebreaker over a team (or teams) with the same record. It would certainly be a much better gauge to let that difference be decided on the field rather than by head-to-head matchups, conference record or strength of schedule.

“With the competitiveness of the league, you see teams get hot the second half of the season. A reasonable argument could be made that there are teams that should qualify for the playoffs and don’t and could win the Super Bowl,” commissioner Roger Goodell told NFL.com last week when asked about the issue. “I don’t think we want to expand just to have more teams. We want to create more excitement, more interest and give teams a chance to win the Super Bowl.”

Adding an extra “play-in” game in each conference certainly seems like the best way to do that.

A ‘play-in’ game between the highest-seeded wild-cards would be the best way to incorporate an extra playoff team.

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